Part 10 (1/2)
In order to show the amount of work, the number of separate motions in a day's work in weaving of close woollen cloth like broadcloth (which was only about three yards), we must remember that the shuttle was thrown over three thousand times, and the treadles pressed down and batten swung the same number of times.
A simple but clear description of the process of weaving is given in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, thus Englished in 1724:--
”The piece prepare And order every slender thread with care; The web enwraps the beam, the reed divides While through the widening s.p.a.ce the shuttle glides, Which their swift hands receive, then poised with lead The swinging weight strikes close the inserted thread.”
A loom attachment which I puzzled over was a tomble or tumble, the word being seen in eighteenth-century lists, etc., yet absolutely untraceable. I at last inferred, and a weaver confirmed my inference, that it was a corruption of temple, an attachment made of flat, narrow strips of wood as long as the web is wide, with hooks or pins at the end to catch into the selvage of the cloth, and keep the cloth stretched firmly an even width while the reed beats the weft-thread into place.
There were many other simple yet effective attachments to the loom.
Their names have been upon the lips of scores of thousands of English-speaking people, and the words are used in all treatises on weaving; yet our dictionaries are dumb and ignorant of their existence.
There was the pace-weight, which kept the warp even; and the bore-staff, which tightened the warp. When a sufficient length of woof had been woven (it was usually a few inches), the weaver proceeded to do what was called drawing a bore or a sink. He s.h.i.+fted the temple forward; rolled up the cloth on the cloth bar, which had a crank-handle and ratchets; unwound the warp a few inches, s.h.i.+fted back the rods and heddles, and started afresh.
Looms and their appurtenances were usually made by local carpenters; and it can plainly be seen that thus constant work was furnished to many cla.s.ses of workmen in every community,--wood-turners, beam-makers, timber-sawyers, and others. The various parts of the looms were in unceasing demand, though apparently they never wore out. The sley was the most delicate part of the mechanism. Good sley-makers could always command high prices for their sleys. I have seen one whole and good, which has been in general use for weaving rag carpets ever since the War of 1812, for which a silver dollar was paid. Spools were turned and marked with the maker's initials. There were choice and inexplicable lines in the shape of a shuttle as there are in a boat's hull. When a shuttle was carefully shaped, sc.r.a.ped, hollowed out, tipped with steel, and had the maker's initials burnt in it, it was a proper piece of work, of which any craftsman might be proud. Apple-wood and boxwood were the choice for shuttles.
Smaller looms, called tape-looms, braid-looms, belt-looms, garter-looms, or ”gallus-frames,” were seen in many American homes, and useful they were in days when linen, cotton, woollen, or silk tapes, bobbins, and webbings or ribbons were not common and cheap as to-day. Narrow bands such as tapes, none-so-pretty's, ribbons, caddises, ferretings, inkles, were woven on these looms for use for garters, points, glove-ties, hair-laces, shoestrings, belts, hat-bands, stay-laces, breeches-suspenders, etc.
These tape-looms are a truly ancient form of appliance for the hand-weaving of narrow bands,--a heddle-frame. They are rudely primitive in shape, but besides serving well the colonists in all our original states, are still in use among the Indian tribes in New Mexico and in Lapland, Italy, and northern Germany. They are scarcely more than a slightly shaped board so cut in slits that the centre of the board is a row of narrow slats. These slats are pierced in a row by means of a heated wire and the warp-threads are pa.s.sed through the holes.
A common form of braid-loom was one that was laid upon a table. A still simpler form was held upright on the lap, the knees being firmly pressed into semicircular indentations cut for the purpose on either side of the board which formed the lower part of the loom. The top of the loom was steadied by being tied with a band to the top of a chair, or a hook in the wall. It was such light and pretty work that it seemed merely an industrial amus.e.m.e.nt, and girls carried their tape-looms to a neighbor's house for an afternoon's work, just as they did their knitting-needles and ball of yarn. A fringe-loom might also be occasionally found, for weaving decorative fringes; these were more common in the Hudson River valley than elsewhere.
I have purposely given minute, but I trust not tiresome, details of the operation of weaving on a hand-loom, because a few years more will see the last of those who know the operation and the terms used. The fact that so many terms are now obsolete proves how quickly disuse brings oblivion. When in a country crowded full of weavers, as was England until about 1845, the knowledge has so suddenly disappeared, need we hope for much greater memory or longer life here? When what is termed the Westmoreland Revival of domestic industries was begun eight or ten years ago, the greatest difficulty was found in obtaining a hand-loom.
No one knew how to set it up, and it was a long time before a weaver could be found to run it and teach others its use.
The first half of this century witnessed a vital struggle in England, and to an extent in America, between hand and power machinery, and an interesting race between spinning and weaving. Under old-time conditions it was calculated that it took the work of four spinners, who spun swiftly and constantly, to supply one weaver. As spinning was ever what was known as a by-industry,--that is, one that chiefly was done by being caught up at odd moments,--the supply both in England and America did not equal the weavers' demands, and ten spinners had to be calculated to supply yarn for one weaver. Hence weavers never had to work very hard; as a rule, they could have one holiday in the week. What with Sundays, wakes, and fairs, Irish weavers worked only two hundred days in the year. In England the weaver often had to spend one day out of the six hunting around the country for yarn for weft. So inventive wits were set at work to enlarge the supply of yarn, and spinning machinery was the result. Thereafter the looms and weavers were pushed hard and had to turn to invention. The shuttle had always simply been pa.s.sed from one hand to the other of the weaver on either side of the web. The fly-shuttle was now invented, which by a simple piece of machinery, worked by one hand, threw the shuttle swiftly backward and forward, and the loom was ahead in the race. Then came the spinning-jenny, which spun yarn with a hundred spindles on each machine. But this was for weft yarns, and did not make strong warps. Finally Arkwright supplied this lack in water-twist or ”throstle-spun” yarn. All these inventions again overcrowded the weavers; all attempts at hand-spinning of cotton had become quickly extinct. Wool-spinning lingered longer. Five Tomlinson sisters,--the youngest forty years old,--with two pair of wool-cards and five hand-wheels, paid the rent of their farm, kept three cows, one horse, had a ploughed field, and made prime b.u.t.ter and eggs. One sister clung to her spinning till 1822. Power-looms were invented to try to use up the jenny's supply of yarn, but these did not crowd out hand-looms.
Weavers never had so good wages. It was the Golden Age of Cotton. Some families earned six pounds a week; good clothes, even to the extent of ruffled s.h.i.+rts, good furniture, even to silver spoons, good food, plentiful ale and beer, entered every English cottage with the weaving of cotton and wool. A far more revolutionary and more hated machine than the power-loom was the combing-machine called Big Ben.
”Come all ye Master Combers, and hear of our Big Ben.
He'll comb more wool than fifty of your men With their hand-combs, and comb-pots, and such old-fas.h.i.+oned way.”
Flax-spinning and linen-weaving by power machinery were slower in being established. Englishmen were halting in perfecting these machines.
Napoleon offered in 1810 a million francs for a flax-spinning machine. A clever Frenchman claimed to have invented one in response in a single day, but similar clumsy machines had then been running in England for twenty years. By 1850 men, women, and children--combers, spinners, and weavers--were no longer individual workers; they had become part of that great monster, the mill-machinery. Riots and misery were the first result of the pa.s.sing of hand weaving and spinning.
In the _Vision of Piers Ploughman_ (1360) are these lines:--
”Cloth that cometh fro the wevyng Is nought comly to were Till it be fulled under foot Or in fullyng stokkes Wa.s.shen wel with water And with taseles cracched, Y-touked and y-tented And under taillours hande.”
Just so in the colonies four centuries later, cloth that came from the weaving was not comely to wear till it was fulled under foot or in fulling-stocks, washed well in water, scratched and dressed with teazels, dyed and tented, and put in the tailor's hands. Nor did the roll of centuries bring a change in the manner of proceeding. If grease had been put on the wool when it was carded, or sizing in the warp for the weaving, it was washed out by good rinsing from the woven cloth.
This became now somewhat uneven and irregular in appearance, and full of knots and fuzzes which were picked out with hand-tweezers by burlers before it was fulled or milled, as it was sometimes called. The fulling-stocks were a trough in which an enormous oaken hammer was made to pound up and down, while the cloth was kept thoroughly wet with warm soap and water, or fullers' earth and water. Naturally this thickened the web much and reduced it in length. It was then teazelled; that is, a nap or rough surface was raised all over it by scratching it with weavers' teazels or thistles. Many wire brushes and metal subst.i.tutes have been tried to take the place of nature's gift to the cloth-worker, the teazel, but nothing has been invented to replace with full satisfaction that wonderful scratcher. For the slender recurved bracts of the teazel heads are stiff and p.r.i.c.kly enough to roughen thoroughly the nap of the cloth, yet they yield at precisely the right point to keep from injuring the fabric.
If the cloth were to be ”y-touked,” that is, dyed, it was done at this period, and it was then ”y-tented,” spread on the tenter-field and caught on tenter-hooks, to shrink and dry.
Nowadays, we sometimes cut or crop the nap with long shears, and boil the web to give it a l.u.s.tre, and ink it to color any ill-dyed fibres, and press it between hot plates before it goes to the tailor's hands; but these injurious processes were omitted in olden times. Worsted stuffs were not fulled, but were woven of hand-combed wool.
Linen webs after they were woven had even more manipulations to come to them than woollen stuffs. In spite of all the bleaching of the linen thread, it still was light brown in color, and it had to go through at least twoscore other processes, of bucking, possing, rinsing, drying, and bleaching on the gra.s.s. Sometimes it was stretched out on pegs with loops sewed on the selvage edge. This bleaching was called crofting in England, and gra.s.sing in America. Often it was thus spread on the gra.s.s for weeks, and was slightly wetted several times a day; but not too wet, else it would mildew. In all, over forty bleaching operations were employed upon ”light linens.” Sometimes they were ”soured” in b.u.t.termilk to make them purely white. Thus at least sixteen months had pa.s.sed since the flaxseed had been sown, in which, truly, the spinster had not eaten the bread of idleness. In the winter months the fine, white, strong linen was made into ”board cloths” or tablecloths, sheets, pillow-biers, ap.r.o.ns, s.h.i.+fts, s.h.i.+rts, petticoats, short gowns, gloves, cut from the spinner's own glove pattern, and a score of articles for household use.
These were carefully marked, and sometimes embroidered with home-dyed crewels, as were also splendid sets of bed-hangings, valances, and testers for four-post bedsteads.
The homespun linens that were thus spun and woven and bleached were one of the most beautiful expressions and types of old-time home life. Firm, close-woven, and pure, their designs were not greatly varied, nor was their woof as symmetrical and perfect as modern linens--but thus were the lives of those who made them; firm, close-woven in neighborly kindness, with the simplicity both of innocence and ignorance; their days had little variety, and life was not altogether easy, and, like the web they wove, it was sometimes narrow. I am always touched when handling these homespun linens with a consciousness of nearness to the makers; with a sense of the energy and strength of those enduring women who were so full of vitality, of unceasing action, that it does not seem to me they can be dead.
The strong, firm linen woven in many struggling country homes was too valuable and too readily exchangeable and salable to be kept wholly for farm use, especially when there were so few salable articles produced on the farm. It was sold or more frequently exchanged at the village store for any desired commodity, such as calico, salt, sugar, spices, or tea.
It readily sold for forty-two cents a yard. Therefore the boys and even the fathers did not always have linen s.h.i.+rts to wear. From the tow which had been hatch.e.l.led out from harl a coa.r.s.e thread was spun and cloth was woven which was made chiefly into s.h.i.+rts and smocks and tow ”tongs” or ”skilts,” which were loose flapping summer trousers which ended almost half-way from the knee to the ankle. This tow stuff was never free from p.r.i.c.kling spines, and it proved, so tradition states, an absolute instrument of torture to the wearer, until frequent was.h.i.+ngs had worn it out and thus subdued its knots and spines.
A universal stuff woven in New Hamps.h.i.+re by the Scotch-Irish linen-weavers who settled there, and who influenced husbandry and domestic manufactures and customs all around them, was what was known as striped frocking. It was worn also to a considerable extent in Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts. The warp was strong white cotton or tow thread, the weft of blue and white stripes made by weaving alternately a shuttleful of indigo-dyed homespun yarn and one of white wool or tow.